Parlez-vous francais? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Lei parla italiano? There are plenty of good reasons, both personal and professional, for being able to reply "Oui," "Ja," or "Si." And if it's been years since you last tried conjugating a verb, there's good news.

Posted: "I just don't have time." This is one of the most common reasons people give for not being able to learn languages. I'm now retired, but I'm still quite busy. I play sports, make time for my family and I have a number of tasks that I perform as part of LingQ.

It's no revelation that the key to learning a new language is immersing yourself among native speakers of that language. But what if those native speakers are Dora the Explorer and Diego? It turns out television and radio might be even better tools for new language learners than previously thought.

Research that keeps in view the shift in people's persona when they learn a new language and start communicating in it suggests that our personalities are highly influenced by the language we speak . A somewhat similar concept was also explained in humourist David Sedaris's book Me Talk Pretty One Day.

In WSN's pages and elsewhere, students will often take NYU to task over the myriad requirements students in the College of Arts and Science must fulfill before they graduate: two science requirements, up to four semesters of a foreign language, Writing the Essay, a math class and then some.

Conventional wisdom holds that the older we get, the harder it is to learn a new language. Which is true - except when it's not. Turns out that while our brains might not be as quick or deft as in those halcyon days of youth, all that hard-earned experience, knowledge and discipline can come to the rescue.